582 METEOROLOGICAL JOURNAL. 
is performed by certain women of the tribe whose peculiar office 
it is to attend to these rites. 
In the year 1828, from the commencement of January to the 
middle of August, the Adventure (the ship I commanded) was at 
anchor at Port Famine, in the Strait of Magalhaens, in latitude 
53° 38}’ south, and longitude 70° 54’ west of Greenwich ; and 
during the whole of that time a careful meteorological journal 
was kept. The temperature was registered from a very good ther- 
mometer of Fahrenheit’s scale, suspended within a copper cylin- 
drical case of nine inches diameter, and perforated above and 
below with holes, to admit a free current of air. The cylinder was 
fixed to the roof of a shed, thatched with dried leaves to shelter it 
from the sun, while the sides were open. The barometer (a moun- 
tain barometer made by Newman, with an iron cylinder) was 
hung up in the observatory, five feet above the high-water mark, 
and both instruments were examined carefully and regularly at the 
following hours, namely: six and nine o’clock in the morning, at 
noon, and at three and six o'clock in the evening. The state of 
the atmosphere was observed daily, by Daniel’s hygrometer, at 
three o’clock in the afternoon, The maximum and minimum tem- 
peratures were also observed twice in twenty-four hours, from a 
Six’s thermometer, namely: at nine o’clock in the morning, and 
at nine in the evening. From this journal the following abstract 
has been drawn up :— 
